We always say you shouldn’t invest in stories, but sometimes it’s so darn hard not to. That’s because deep down inside, we all like to have a punt now and then. It isn’t often we’re compelled to invest in teams with dreams, but Ginkgo Bioworks tempts our risk-averse nature like few others have. Since we […]
At the beginning of the month, we talked trash. Specifically, the piles of plastic that threaten to overwhelm many countries in the world. One long-term solution is to use biodegradable bioplastics made from natural renewable resources like algae. But that still leaves a legacy of water bottles, packaging, and Kardashian body parts that will be […]
The human body is such an incredibly complex system that in order to truly understand it, we’ll need to emulate it by creating a digital twin. Last summer, we met with a Hungarian startup called Turbine that’s building digital cells that are so accurate they can mimic wet lab experiments. The next step is to […]
We recently ventured deep into Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, home to legendary strains like Alaskan Thunderfuck, to learn more about the legal and illegal weed industry in the Last Frontier state. The bottom line: The kind bud is very unkind to your wallet, with an eighth of an ounce (about 3.5 grams) setting you back anywhere […]
The human body is an amazing machine. Think about all of the cellular programming that went into making you, starting with a single cell. Also, notice how when we talk about biology these days we draw the inevitable analogy with computers and machines. Artificial intelligence is one obvious example, as artificial neural networks attempt to […]
The unicorn has been a creature of legend and myth since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. You know the sort: a rare and magnificent beast, a gleaming, spiral horn protruding from its head like a mighty if malformed phallus. A thing so pure that it practically ishts rainbows and butterflies. A unicorn. […]
As each day passes, mankind seems to get dumber and dumber. Squabbling about petty political disagreements, idolizing talent-less “celebrities”, allowing stock promotion scams to run rampant, eating gluten-free food, trying to keep up with the Kardashians, chasing around cartoon characters, ruining the planet – the list of stupid things we occupy our time with just keeps […]
We recently wrote an article about how we need to redefine what “nanotechnology” means in the context of looking for “nanotech” companies to invest it. When you can use synthetic biology and gene editing to change the way that bacteria function by genetically modifying them, the result is microscopic biological machines. These tiny biological machines sound a whole lot like the […]
One of the most exciting aspects of nanotechnology, as described by Eric Drexler, is the notion of nanobots or nanorobots, tiny self-replicating machines that go about doing cool things at a molecular level like curing cancer or cleaning up polution. The big concern of course was what to do if these nanorobots started replicating uncontrollably […]